1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for printing information associated with a printed image such as date, etc., without degrading the appearance of the image.
2. Description of the Related Art
In photographic records, date information which indicates the date on which a photograph was taken is often important, and sometimes, even valuable. Many cameras using silver salt film have a date function (date impose function), and, when an object is photographed, a date is imposed on the object image in the same frame during the exposure, so that a photograph in which the date overlaps the object image can be obtained. However, since characters representing the date are imposed on the printed image after the development, the appearance of the photograph is significantly degraded.
Due to the development of digital cameras, it has become possible to record and store image information along with associated information such as dates, conditions, names of image files, etc., with a common, standard format. For example, Exchangeable Image Format (Exif), which is common to various manufacturers, defines the kinds of tags with which the information associated with image data is recorded.
When such associated information is printed on a margin outside an image-printing area, the date information, etc., can be printed without degrading the appearance of the image.
However, in known apparatuses, there are problems in printing the associated information such as the date information, etc., as described below.
That is, since the margin is necessary for printing the date information, the image-printing area must be reduced or print paper having a relatively large size must be used. In addition, since the information is printed on the margin outside the image, the area of the margin must be increased as the amount of information to be printed is increased. Accordingly, it may become impossible to print the image at the maximum allowable print size of the print paper.
In addition, in digital-image-data printing, there are requirements for margin-free printouts as there were in the conventional photograph printing using silver salt film. However, if characters, etc., are imposed on an image in order to satisfy such requirements without changing the paper size, the problems of the conventional photograph printing cannot be solved. More specifically, when the date information, etc., is printed along with an image, characters representing the information must be printed with vivid colors (for example, orange, yellow, etc.) at a predetermined position in the image-printing area so that they can be seen clearly. As a result, the appearance of the photograph is degraded.
When the margins, which are used for preventing the characters representing a date, etc., from being imposed on the image, cannot be provided, another way to avoid printing the characters on the image is to print them on the backside. However, in such a case, a double-side printing mechanism is required, so that the size of the apparatus is increased and mechanism and control thereof becomes complex. In addition, high costs are incurred and the printing time is increased.